DECISION POINT: You are 4-handed at the Final Table of a major daily tournament with payouts at $15,190 to the winner, $10,960 for 2nd, $7,940 for 3rd, and $5,760 for 4th place. The Blinds are 50,000/100,000 with a 100,000 big blind ante and you have 25BBs. The chip leader (who is a good, aggressive player) is on your left on the Button with 35BBs, the Small Blind has 5BBs, and the Big Blind has 15BBs. First to act you raise 2BBs with A♠T♥, the Button 3-Bets to 4.5BBs, the Blinds fold, and action is back on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are at the Final Table of a major daily tournament. The payouts are $15,190 for first, $10,960 for second, $7,940 for third, and $5,760 for fourth. The blinds are 50,000/100,000 with a 100,000 big blind ante. We are second in chips with 25 big blinds and have the chip leader, who is a good and aggressive player, to our immediate left with 35 big blinds on the Button. The Small Blind started the hand with 5 big blinds and the Big Blind has 15 big blinds.

We are dealt A♠T♥ Under the Gun. Considering this table layout with the chip leader directly to our left and a short stack in the Small Blind, we are going to have to open much tighter than the normal range in this spot. The direct effect of this is that many hands we might normally open first-in will now become folds.

However, even though our strategy should be to tighten up in this situation, our specific hand ATo is still too strong to consider folding. We open to 200,000 and the Button reraises to 450,000. Both Blinds fold and action is back on us.

In a strictly chip EV situation, this would be a clear call against a skilled and aggressive opponent. We are getting very compelling pot odds of more than 4 to 1, and our opponent’s range will often include a lot of suited Ax hands we dominate, as well as some pairs and suited broadway hands we are either ahead of or doing quite well against.

This is not a strictly Chip EV (expected value) situation given there are major ICM (independent chip model) implications, with nearly a $10,000 difference between 1st and 4th place, and more than $2,000 difference between 3rd and 4th place finishes. As the second biggest stack remaining, busting out in 4th place would be a fairly catastrophic outcome.

While we can’t fold our entire range if we eventually want to win all the chips in the tournament, ATo can still be quite vulnerable even four-handed and is weak enough to fold in this situation.

Taking a look at this spot in a GTO Solver we see that AQo is the worst offsuit ace combination we can continue with in this 4 handed Final Table scenario.

Folding is the best play.